If the STAAR test is a good measure, Texas public school students learned a lot more math last school year than many educators had expected.

The state math standards changed dramatically for grades three through eight last school year. So much so that teachers, superintendents, members of the State Board of Education and even the education commissioner agreed that students would be unusually challenged by the annual tests.

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But results released by the Texas Education Agency this month zigged where the predictions zagged: Average scores and passing rates on the new tests were not dramatically different from the prior years of STAAR.

Did teachers beat their own expectations? Did the test change too much from one year to the next to be compared? Is STAAR not precise enough in measuring content knowledge to allow for close comparisons?

State officials think the results show real progress.

“They tend to be a crowd that underpromises and overdelivers,” said Gloria Zyskowski, the TEA’s director of student assessment.

Even some educators most worried a year ago say that is part of the answer. HD Chambers, superintendent of Alief ISD near Houston, was among the leaders who warned that the new standards could produce dismal test results.

“I think our kids performed a lot better than a lot of people expected them to perform,” he said.

But the success is still a bit mysterious to him. In Alief, students did better than the benchmark tests given in the classrooms had predicted. So he’s looking at the possibility that precise year-over-year comparisons aren’t valid.

“I think it may be a combination of those,” Chambers said.

Combination of factors

Other Texas experts on math standards and testing agree that it could be that combination — better performance and imprecise comparisons.

But state officials say that, despite the changes in the standards and the exams, the scores and passing rates are as comparable as the process can make them. They say that the passing marks for the new exams represent the same level of proficiency for the new standards as the old passing marks did for the old standards.

The changes in those standards, however, were seismic. For instance, more than half of what last year’s sixth-graders were expected to learn was taught the prior year in seventh grade. About 40 percent of last year’s third-grade requirements weren’t in the standards at all — but the TEKS in higher grades assumed that students covered that material.

Educators had warned that it could take a couple of years to fill in all the gaps. Education Commissioner Michael Williams responded to the concerns:

“Based on what I hear from those working in the classroom, I agree and will not count grades 3-8 math assessment results in 2015 accountability ratings for schools, charters and districts,” Williams wrote in announcing the policy in April.

And students taking the tests in fifth and eighth grades last school year did not need to meet the rule that they had to pass to be automatically promoted.

But the worst fears were not realized. Far from it.

Changes in the passing rates ranged from up 7 percent — third grade — to down 4 percent — sixth and eighth grades. So-called “average scale scores” linked to student proficiency fell a little in three grades, rose in one and stayed flat in the remaining two.

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The percentages of students whose scores met “post-secondary readiness” were all but unchanged. Though that’s not all good news. Had that level been set as the passing score, more than half of the students in every grade would have failed. As has been true for all four years of STAAR.

‘Fear was overblown’

David Vinson, superintendent of Wylie ISD in Collin County, was another leader in calling for having last year’s tests pulled from the accountability system. His district has shown unusual progress on all STAAR tests the past couple of years. That was also true with the recent STAAR results.

“Texas teachers filled the gaps, taught new material and without a specific idea regarding how the questions would be framed, helped our kids find success on the STAAR,” he said.

But now that the results and some of the test questions have been released, his staff is digging in to see if STAAR actually matches what was happening in Wylie classrooms.

State Board of Education member Thomas Ratliff, R-Mount Pleasant, sides with those who see progress due to hard work.

“I think some of the fear was overblown, candidly. Parents, teachers and students are so worn out from testing, they feared the worst,” he said.

But Ervin Knezek is one of several education experts warning not to draw too many conclusions from the latest scores. Knezek heads Lead4Ward, an education consulting company that works closely with more than a hundred Texas districts. He’s also been a teacher, principal and deputy superintendent.

He loves using years of data to guide improvements, he said. But the changes in last school year’s math standards and tests were so large that he’s told his clients not to bother looking back.

“This is a comparison I could not figure out how to draw,” he said. “I have abandoned trying to make that comparison.”

This year, though, Texas educators have experience with the standards and the new tests. And that’s changed the anxiety level of his clients, he said.

“The urgency last year was that we didn’t know where to start,” he said. “This year the urgency is different because we can make a more informed decision about where to do our work.”